U.S. Military in Saudi Arabia Digs Into the Sand

By DOUGLAS JEHL

Published: November 9, 1996

AL KHARJ, Saudi Arabia, Nov. 6—
To reach what its commander calls ''the newest base in the United States Air Force,'' drive 70 miles from the nearest city, brave three checkpoints, submit to a pat-down search, let dogs sniff out your vehicle, and only then, far across the desert, will you glimpse what the American military presence in Saudi Arabia has become.

Welcome to Prince Sultan Air Base, which lacks a control tower, water, fuel, electricity and a sewage system of its own, but now is home to 4,200 American personnel and 78 warplanes lured by its splendid isolation.

It was only weeks ago that American warplanes were flying missions over Iraq from bases near the hearts of the cities of Riyadh and Dhahran, while United States military compounds stood as well-known landmarks on those cities' streets. But after two bombings in a year that have killed 24 Americans, the bulk of the United States military in the kingdom, along with 25,000 tons of equipment, has fled for the sands.

''It's sad, but we just weren't safe in Dhahran,'' said Brig. Gen. Daniel Dick, commander of the 4404th Air Wing, which lost 19 men in a car-bomb attack on June 25. ''And it's safe here.''

Except for a few U-2 spy planes in Taif, an Army contingent and Patriot missiles in Dhahran, and a headquarters in Riyadh that has abandoned its offices and is now hunkered down in its housing complex, nearly everything the United States military owns in Saudi Arabia is now sitting outside Al Kharj, along a runway that until Sept. 3 had gone unused since the Persian Gulf war.

One day, the Saudis say, Prince Sultan -- named for Saudi Arabia's Defense Minister -- will be the biggest air base in the world. But for now it remains a base-in-progress, and Americans have taken up tenancy in the hope that its remoteness can swallow a crisis.

Since June the Pentagon has designated the security situation in Saudi Arabia as ''critical,'' but the United States has repeatedly vowed not to withdraw from Saudi Arabia, its most important regional ally. (The security designation was downgraded on Wednesday to ''serious,'' Air Force officers said.)

American planners have emphasized the importance that Saudi Arabia has played since 1993 as the base of operations for American, British and French aircraft enforcing a no-flight zone over southern Iraq.

But American officials also recognize that the United States presence may be destabilizing, an affront to religious militants who oppose the Saudi Government and who have taken responsibility for the bombing in Riyadh last November of a building used by American contractors to train members of the Saudi National Guard.

By taking refuge in Al Kharj, it is clear, the United States hopes to walk that line at less risk, carrying out its mission as inconspicuously as possible. ''We're less visible and intrusive, which is good for the Saudis,'' an American official said. ''And we're better protected, so it's better for us.''

From Al Kharj, where an Air Force survey in early August found no ramp lights, no navigation aids and a runway littered with debris, as many as 100 aircraft now take off every day for the skies over southern Iraq.

But American commanders have prohibited everyone who is not in the cockpit of the plane from straying beyond the perimeter fence, meaning that few if any of the airmen passing through on 90-day tours will see more of Saudi Arabia than the surrounding desert.

At the same time, every drop of fuel and water at the base must be hauled southeast from Riyadh, the nearest large city, from which contract workers hired by the Saudi Government set out with 35 truckloads a day. Every volt of electricity must be generated at a plant the Air Force itself has built.

And while the security police have strung miles of concertina wire, put up hundreds of concrete barriers, and used a 250-square-mile fenced compound that surrounds the American headquarters to build a formidable defense in depth, a visit to the base suggested that isolation had also taken a toll.

In letters to relatives, some Air Force personnel stationed at Al Kharj have expressed fear that security precautions at the base are not sufficient to defend against an attack like the one in Dhahran, General Dick said.

The commander said he had learned of those complaints from a report in Knight-Ridder newspapers and a column by David Hackworth, a retired Army colonel, that appeared in The Patriot News of Harrisburg, Pa. Without naming its author, both accounts quoted from one letter that read in part: ''We are going to get hit again. Many of us are going to die.''

General Dick's predecessor, Brig. Gen. Terryl Schwalier, who was in command of the 440th Air Wing at the time of the Dhahran bombing, when a truck packed with explosives was detonated within 100 feet of a building housing Air Force personnel, was singled out by the Pentagon commission that investigated that attack for paying too little attention to security concerns.

But General Dick insisted that the complaints about Al Kharj were ill-informed, and two reporters who visited the remote base found a security system so tight that an escort was assigned to each vehicle entering the base and an interior security perimeter had been established at a distance of 1,200 feet from the housing compound where airmen sleep eight to a tent.

''I don't know who was spreading these rumors,'' said Staff Sgt. George Kuttesch, a member of the security police. ''But it sounds to me like they weren't too happy in the desert.''

Under an agreement announced here by Defense Secretary William J. Perry on Aug. 1, the United States and Saudi Arabia are to split the cost of the move.

The Saudi Government, which provides nearly all of the food, fuel and water used at the base, also plans to build a control tower and a housing compound that will allow the Americans to move out of their tent city.

But a person who regularly attends a weekly Sunday afternoon coordination meeting headed on the American side by Maj. Gen. Norman Williams of the Army said it had been the scene of ''constant battles over money.''